Ben Johnson hasn’t done anything to hide his vision for the Chicago Bears from the moment he took over as head coach. He wanted a smart, tough, and physical football team that played with orchestrated violence. The best way to do that, in his mind, was through running the football. It seemed counterintuitive. For literal decades, every new offensive wunderkind professed passing the ball as the future of the sport and the only true way to win. Anybody who embraced the running game was called backwards and old-fashioned.
However, anybody who knows football understands that it’s cyclical. There was always going to be a time when defenses would adjust to the pass-happy league the NFL became. When that happened, offenses had to adjust. That meant one thing: running the ball. Johnson is at the forefront of that resurgence, crafting one of the most consistently devastating attacks in the sport. What makes it so effective is his constant effort to improve it with new ideas.
People have no idea how obsessed he is with this process. In fact, it was part of the reason why he hired new running backs coach Eric Studesville.
Ben Johnson idolizing McDaniel’s work is such nerd behavior.
He’s like a computer programmer working on a video game and suddenly sees another programmer release a new engine with state-of-the-art graphics. That inevitably makes Johnson want to dig into the code and mine its secrets. McDaniel has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best run game specialists in the NFL. He got 18 touchdowns from Raheem Mostert in 2022, and over 1300 rushing yards from De’Von Achane last season. His scheme is diverse, complex, and more than a little unconventional.
🔥 Subscribe to the Untold Chicago YouTube channel to hear Chicago legends tell stories you’ve never seen in headlines — real moments, real experiences, straight from the athletes themselves.
One of his great strengths is the use of motion. He maneuvers players around the line of scrimmage like chess pieces, creating confusion for the defense while putting his blockers in the best possible spots. This helps them create advantageous angles to seal off lanes that the running backs slice through for big plays. He also has a great knack for running different plays out of alignments that look similar. This is a core principle Johnson adheres to, so it’s no wonder he’s fascinated by McDaniel’s scheme.
Another factor is play action.
Ben Johnson is a huge proponent of play fakes and marrying them with the run game for maximum effect. Well, so is McDaniel. Every run he designs seems to have a play action concept built into it, allowing him to constantly freeze linebackers and defensive ends, creating time for the quarterback to find his open man. His offense was 1st in 2022 and 5th in 2023 in passing yards off play action. That was with Tua Tagovailoa as his quarterback, who doesn’t have anywhere near the same talent as Caleb Williams.
Johnson is likely eager to see what those same concepts can accomplish when applied to a more capable quarterback. It is another reminder that, while other offensive coaches constantly work to find new tricks in the passing game, he is leading a renaissance on the ground. It seems incredibly fitting that Johnson is doing this in Chicago, a franchise with one of the most storied running back traditions in NFL history.
